1. The Field of the Invention.
The field of the invention relates to an improved apparatus for finishing either in mass production or on a custom basis golf wood club head faces. In the golf club art, the term "wood" has come to encompass that class of clubs in which the driver is found, notwithstanding the fact that wood as a manufacturing material may no longer be used. In fact, the art includes heads made of other materials such as plastics, laminates involving wood, fiberglas or graphite composites and cast stainless steel or aluminum under the generic term of golf "wood." The present invention can be utilized to finish any head material. Except as read otherwise in context, the term "wood" as used throughout this application defines the class of club rather than the material.
2. Description of the Prior Art.
The prior art is summarized typically by U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,675,437 to Waldron, 4,245,391 and '392 to Hecker, 2,973,581 to Rhodehamel, 3,357,219 to Hunter, 3,439,429 to Sundstrom and 4,094,072 to Erb. Various devices are shown which only treat of adjusting lie and loft and calibrating them in golf clubs, whether woods or irons, by imparting a twist or bend to the shaft. '437 to Waldron is of interest but ignores, as does the rest of the art, the significance of the interaction of the six major factors in golf club head construction, repair or adjustment: loft, lie, face angle, face progression, bulge (curvature of face horizontally) and roll (curvature of face vertically) and that to do so can never produce a satisfactory club, whether newly made or adjusted. '437 appears to teach a device which will apply or correct loft and apply some bulge to a golf wood but one may infer that the art as of 1927 neither understood the importance of the variable nature of bulge and roll as factors nor the relationships among all the factors.
It is nevertheless true that automatic wood golf head turning machines which roughly shape laminated or solid head blocks are well-known. However, face finishing remains, essentially a manual art.
The present invention permits disposition of all six factors in golf wood construction and their interrelationship all at once and represents a revolutionary advance in the art.
The art as practiced is generally set forth in a certain text book, Maltby; Golf Club Design, Fitting, Alteration and Repair (1974; Newark, Ohio, Faultless Sports Div.) An abstract of pp. 137 through 161 is submitted herewith as an appendix on the assumption that the text because of its apparent limited distribution may not be part of the archives of the Office. It is requested that the appendix be filed with the application. Further, the appendix is submitted as a reference but no claim is made by your applicant as to any right to copy the materials therein contained other than for the purpose of this submission.
The terminology as used and defined in the text is adopted here as acceptable in the art and followed as closely as possible for the purposes of this application.
The six factors in wood head design and production interact with each other and present problems of many kinds to practitioners of the golf wood facing art because no ready means has been available to treat all of them simultaneously. The factors are defined in detail below as necessary for understanding. (Club head weight and shaft flexibility not being pertinent to this application are not considered hereunder).
The artisan frequently finds that changing one factor can inadvertently cause changes in another and that simultaneous coordination of all factors can be difficult to achieve. Until now, golf wood face production, repair, or alteration has been a highly skilled manual and judgmental art, requiring special gauges, jigs, templates and limited purpose fixtures as well as especially designed finishing equipment useful to the artisan. None of these combines the flexible and novel features of the present invention which solves all at one time in cooperation with each other and interactively the six major factors enumerated above with great accuracy with a low level of manual skill required by the user who can accomplish face changes without error or ruining his work.
A right or left handed club can be accommodated by the present invention and it will be obvious to one skilled in the art that the actual operation of wood face finishing can be automated by means well-known in the machinery arts.